Redemption Thy Name is Tyler Kennedy by @chrisrbarron

My rec league hockey number is 48.When a teammate asked me why I wore 48, I
told them that my favorite player's number is 48.When they asked who that was, I told them,
"Tyler Kennedy."My teammates
response was, "who?"

Being the self-appointed President of the Tyler Kennedy fan
club has been a lonely place during much of the Pens regular season.TK, as I have written before, deserved some
of the criticism but at some point the TK hate was no longer really moored to
reality.TK got the blame for any and
everything bad that happened to the Penguins.

At the beginning of the Islanders series very few Pens fans
wanted to see Tyler Kennedy on ice - despite TK's previous playoff experience and
success.Even though Bylsma had stuck by
Kennedy all year, TK was a healthy scratch for the first 4 games of this past
series.

Of course, a lot can change in just four games.By the time game 5 rolled around, the Pens
were knotted up with the Islanders 2 games to 2 and - with the exception of
game 1 - had been outskated and outplayed in virtually every part of the game.Sensing the need to shake up his team, Dan
Bylsma shook up his lineup for game 5 - and part of that shakeup was putting
Tyler Kennedy back into the lineup.

I can't imagine how deflating it must have been for TK to
have been a healthy scratch for those first four games.Getting hounded by fans and on sports radio
and the social media is one thing, getting benched by your coach in the
playoffs is another.TK never
complained, however, just like he never complained about constantly being
bounced from line to line during the regular season.

As a TK fan, I hoped that he would come out in game 5 and
play with passion and intensity.From
puck drop it was clear that was exactly what he was going to do.And when he took that beautiful stretch pass
from Letang and put it in the net in the 2nd period, suddenly TK had gone from
goat to hero.

In professional sports we are too often treated to stories
of players acting like prima donnas, we are to frequently witness to the ego
and narcissism of pro athletes.We hear
about contract disputes, demands for more money, and the like.It is all too rare that we get a story of
redemption.

For that first series against the Islanders, however, we got a story of
redemption and redemption's name was Tyler Kennedy.

I have no idea whether TK will continue to play as well as
he did in games 5 and 6.And I have no
idea whether TK will be a Penguin beyond this season.But I do know this much:he has earned the right to play and earned
respect - at least for now - from Pens fans.